Robert Loggia biography

Best known for his exuberant dance with Tom Hanks on a gigantic keyboard in Big, Robert Loggia
began his studies at New York's Actors Studio. His first important Broadway assignment was
1955's The Man With the Golden Arm; one year later, he made his first film, Somebody
Up There Likes Me. In 1958, he enjoyed a brief flurry of TV popularity as the title character
in The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca, a multipart western originally telecast on Walt Disney
Presents.

His next weekly TV assignment was as a good-guy burglar in 1967's T.H.E. Cat. A fitfully
successful movie leading man, Loggia truly came into his own when he cast off his toupee and
became a character actor, often in roles requiring quiet menace. As Richard Gere's bullying
father, Loggia dominated the precredits scenes of An Officer and a Gentleman (1981),
was equally effective as the villain in Curse of the Pink Panther (1982) and as mafia
functionaries in Scarface (1983) and Prizzi's Honor (1985). He was nominated for an
Oscar for his portrayal of a two-bit detective in The Jagged Edge (1985).

Loggia has been married twice. With his first wife, Margorie Sloan, he has three children and he has one child with his second wife, Audrey O'Brien.